RELUCTANT READER PRESS
THE COIN
BETWEEN US
History from the inside.
An immersive time-slip series that drops two modern friends into the lives of ordinary people at extraordinary moments in history.
Discover the seriesTHE SERIES
What if history wasn’t
something you studied —
but somewhere you went to?
When Théo and Mara find a mysterious coin,
the past stops being something they read about.
It becomes somewhere they go to.
Each journey takes them to a different time and place, where history is still unfolding and nobody knows what comes next. Théo and Mara sometimes do. But knowing how history ends is very different from living through it.
They meet the people behind the dates and famous names — people who worked, argued, laughed, worried, made choices and tried to survive without knowing that one day their world would be called history.
The past has already happened. For Théo
and Mara, it’s about to happen again.
BETWEEN US
BOOK ONE
MARATHON
They know how the battle ends. Nobody around them does.
Twelve-year-old Théo and Mara are transported from modern-day Guadeloupe to Athens in 490 BC, in the days before the Battle of Marathon. They find themselves living the lives of two ordinary Athenians as the Persian army approaches. They know what history says will happen. The people around them do not.
WHY THE COIN BETWEEN US
A way in, not a lesson.
The Coin Between Us is a book series for young learners who may not reach first for a history book — or sometimes any book at all. It offers the past as a place full of uncertainty, choices, humour, fear and ordinary lives, where events are not yet dates and nobody knows what will matter later.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Martin
Alexander has spent more than thirty years teaching young people in countries across Europe and the Middle East. His work in classrooms, together with a lifelong fascination with history, languages, travel and storytelling, shaped the beginnings of The Coin Between Us. The series brings the past close enough to hear people talking — and close enough to wonder what we might have done in their place.
BOOKSELLERS, MUSEUMS, SCHOOLS & LIBRARIES
Trade & Review Copies
Marathon is available to the book trade. Review copies and further information are available for booksellers, museum and heritage shops, schools, libraries, reviewers and other interested organisations.